Nope, it was one of our own, Brian O'Driscoll to be precise. The All Blacks coach was phlegmatic about this two test series, feeling that he'd gained a fair bit of insight into the true worth of his fringe players, and indeed some of his front-line players, over the past two weekends. Henry is partaking in an ambitious experiment and if he can meddle with his team, find new players, discard old ones and still come away with two victories over the team he has described as the "best in the northern hemisphere", well then it's not difficult to see why he's a happy man.

But as we've said, Ireland were the ones asking questions of themselves afterwards, O'Driscoll being the interrogator in chief. "This team has really moved on over the past couple of years and we don't accept mediocrity or close losses, that's no good for us, " said the captain pointedly. "Irish teams in the past may have seen a game like this one as a reasonable result but that's not the case now. It's been the exact same situation two weeks in a row.

We found ourselves within touching distance of the All Blacks going into the last few minutes but we kind of let them off the hook. That's very disappointing and you can see that in the dressing room on the boys faces. You don't know when that next opportunity against them is going to come. There's massive disappointment but there are some positives out of it, like the way we played."

One of the key reasons they didn't beat the All Blacks was their slow and droopy starts.

It's been a recurring theme this season. In the Six Nations they trailed at home to Italy until the 26th minute, against France in Paris they were 433 behind at the interval, while against England at Twickenham they went behind to an early Jamie Noon try.

This summer, they conceded a try as early as 45 seconds in the first test and yesterday they were at it again, going behind to a Byron Kelleher try on six minutes and trailing 17-0 on the half-hour mark. Certainly, they've made some stirring comebacks in all of the games mentioned but wouldn't it be a lot easier if they didn't concede those early points and then went about playing their rugby?

"It's [poor starts] a worry alright, we were only discussing it earlier, " says Paul O'Connell. "I suppose it's a small bit of an Irish attitude.

If we're playing a team we expect to beat, I don't think we'd get off to a start like we did today. Maybe there's an element that you go behind and you make the brave comeback but we have to take a look at ourselves and lose that attitude. You've got to look at it. We did it against England, we did it twice against New Zealand, it's killing us."

They're well aware that it's happening but do they have a solution? "We were chatting about this, " says the second row, "asking ourselves if our warm-up is not dynamic enough, that kind of thing but I think it's a small bit of an Irish attitude. It shouldn't happen and I don't think it does happen against the weaker nations."

And the next step for Ireland, after a season where they've certainly taken a few steps forward? "Hopefully this will spread belief in the team that we can compete with these teams, " says O'Connell. "We need to take the next step now and believe we can win them. I thought we'd overcome that obstacle, you look at our performance coming back against England in the last few minutes. But you look at these last two games and we've failed to win them and take the chance of a lifetime and it's disappointing."

The chance of a lifetime may have slipped through their fingers but beating Australia next weekend would be a fine achievement, a nice way to prove that the lessons of past few weeks have been taken on board. Perth now awaits.